CALENDAR EFFECTIVENESS OFFICE
Meeting Prerequisite Integrity
Can a meeting begin before everyone agrees what it will decide?
The case for intervention
Decision meetings were taking too long because decisions were being discussed during them. Usual introduced a preparation meeting to remove that uncertainty.
The work undertaken
The preparation meeting developed its own pre-read, which required an alignment call. A 20-person pilot held three one-hour sessions per week for 60 weeks. The final decision meeting was shortened by 15 minutes.
The approved outcome
Reported meeting duration fell. The preparation calls were classified as readiness activity and excluded from the measure. Vickie maintains a notebook for each layer.
What stayed with people
“NOTES FOR THE MEETING BEFORE THE MEETING”
Preparation has its own companion: the meeting-before-the-meeting notebook.
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